Going Deeper

by Carol J. Post

Before I was published, I used to enter a lot of contests. One of the first contests I entered, a judge said I needed to learn to write in deep point of view. I had never heard of it and had to look it up. I have to say, that is some of the best writing advice I have ever gotten.

Writing in deep point of view is not for the lazy. Not only is the concept difficult to master, scenes written in deep point of view also take longer to write, often requiring more words. But the result is well worth the extra effort. Deep point of view lets the reader experience the story through the eyes of the POV character. It adds sparkle to that character’s voice and gives the writing emotional punch.

The first step in deepening point of view is to fully know your characters. What do they want more than anything? What do they feel strongly about? What are their goals, motivations and conflicts? What about quirks, things that make them unique and memorable? Don’t just write about the character; become the character. (Click to Tweet)

Here are some tips for deepening point of view:

1. Eliminate “telling” words and phrases. These are words like thought, felt, saw, heard, wondered, decided, realized, and phrases like was sure and was determined. All of these words and phrases distance the reader from the POV character, because the author is intruding on the story, telling what the character is experiencing. Instead of “He heard a gunshot,” try “A shot rang through the air.” Instead of “She felt sick,” try “Nausea churned in her gut.” Instead of “She was determined not to fall for him again,” try “No way was she going to fall for that dark charm again.”

2. Try to describe emotions rather than naming them. This isn’t to say that you will never name an emotion, but showing the character feeling and acting is much more powerful. Abstract words don’t evoke emotion. When describing an emotion, consider its physical effects on the body, the actions and behaviors of someone experiencing it, and thoughts in keeping with that particular emotion.

In Out for Justice, the heroine, a homicide detective discovers that the latest victim of a serial killer is her cousin. Telling her reaction using a shallow point of view, we would say, “Lexi was shocked and horrified.” In deep point of view, the reader instead experiences those emotions with Lexi:

No.

Lexi shook her head. The ground seemed to tilt beneath her and she took a stumbling step backward to steady herself. A scream of protest clawed its way up her throat, followed by a wave of nausea that almost brought her to her knees.

Alan’s words finally penetrated her befuddled brain, several seconds too late.

“Lexi, it's Kayla.”

3. Try to eliminate dialogue tags as much as possible. By their very nature, dialogue tags (he said, she whispered, etc.) are “telling.” Action and emotion beats show the reader not only who is speaking but also what that character is thinking, feeling and doing. Instead of “talking heads,” we have real flesh-and-blood characters. In the following snippet of conversation from Trust My Heart, the action and emotion beats give the reader insight into the characters that simple tags wouldn’t.

She picked up her coffee cup and washed the Danish down with a loud slurp. “So you’re single? No wife? No girlfriend?”

He cocked a brow at the intrusion into his privacy. But something told him this fiery-haired Bernie wasn’t much for convention.

“I’m not married.” He’d made that mistake once. Two years and a quarter of a million dollars later, he was once again single.

“Don’t worry, you’re still young.” She gave his hand a couple of pats. “You’ve got plenty of time.”

He stifled a snort. Thirty wasn’t exactly young. And if single was an ailment, he wasn’t looking for a cure.

4. Incorporate sensory details. Showing what a character is seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and feeling is one of the most effective ways to immerse a reader into a scene. Choose two or three vivid details, but make sure they are things the character would reasonably notice at that time. Here is the beginning of a scene from Hidden Identity that incorporates the senses of sight and hearing.

Time moved at a snail’s pace.

Meagan sighed and dropped her gaze from the clock on the wall to the book of poetry lying open in her lap. Voices buzzed around her, and across the room, a mother tried to quiet a crying baby.

A half page later, the hero appears, and we have the senses of smell, sound and touch.

A familiar scent wafted toward her, the faintest hint of evergreen, tipped with spice. Her thoughts tumbled over one another.

“Mind if I interrupt your reading?” The voice close to her ear was liquid smooth, sending goose bumps cascading over her.

For more information on this topic, Kathrese McKee, author and editor, offers a great resource. She has written an amazing booklet titled Mastering Deep POV, which takes a passage, sentence by sentence, and transforms it from shallow to deep point of view. She offers the booklet free to all her newsletter subscribers. You can find her at http://www.wordmarkeredits.com/.

Now go back through your current work in progress and see how deep you can go. Reach into the heart of your character and tap into all that emotion. And step out of the way. Your reader will remember your story and characters long after THE END.

TWEETABLES

Going Deep: Elicit Greater Emotion Through DEEP POV by Carol J. Post (Click to Tweet)

Don’t just write about the character; become the character.~ Carol J. Post (Click to Tweet)

From medical secretary to court reporter to property manager to owner of a special events decorating company, Carol J. Post’s resume reads as if she doesn’t know what she wants to be when she grows up. But one thing that has remained constant through the years is her love for writing. She currently pens fun and fast-paced inspirational romance and romantic suspense stories. Her books have been nominated for a RITA® award and an RT Reviewers’ Choice Best Book Award.

Carol lives in sunshiny Central Florida with her husband, who is her own real-life hero, and writes her stories under the shade of the huge oaks in her yard. Besides writing, she works alongside her music minister husband singing and playing the piano. She enjoys sailing, hiking, camping—almost anything outdoors. Her two grown daughters and grandkids live too far away for her liking, so she now pours all that nurturing into taking care of a fat and sassy black cat and a highly spoiled dachshund.

Connect with Carol at her website, www.caroljpost.com, Facebook (www.facebook.com/caroljpost.author), or Twitter (www.twitter.com/caroljpost). For regular updates, sign up for Carol’s newsletter (http://bit.ly/2dKK9CE)

Book Blurb:

Grant McAllister arrives in Murphy, North Carolina, with one aim: to sell his inherited property and leave as quickly as possible. The big-city lawyer has no interest in his late, estranged grandparents or the dilapidated mansion he just acquired. After his high-profile divorce, he should be avoiding perky reporters, too. But Jami Carlisle is honest, funny, and undeniably appealing.

After breaking up with her safe-but-smothering boyfriend, Jami is determined to ace her first big assignment. A story about the McAllister estate is too intriguing to ignore—much like its handsome, commitment-phobic heir. Thanks to her digging, the pieces of Grant’s fraught family history are gradually fitting into place, but also upending all his old beliefs.

The two draw closer as they share their dreams, until misread signals and misunderstandings begin to test their trust. But in the unspoiled beauty of the Smoky Mountains, there’s healing and forgiveness to be found. And for Grant, this unplanned detour may be just what’s needed to finally guide him home…

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If Only I Had Time to Write!

Every person who’s ever had a story idea in her head has had that thought, at least once. For some, it’s much harder to carve out writing time than for others. The single mom with two kids, for example, has more things eating up her 24 hours than, say, a retiree. But there are still ways to make time for writing.

Rather than tell you what you’re doing wrong, let me use myself as an example. I’ve had a total of 11 books traditionally published since my first one in 2007. I’ve learned a lot during that time, but one thing I will probably always struggle with is procrastination. I’m the Queen of Putting it Off. And one of the best ways to do that is to bemoan the lack of time for writing. Just trying to write this blog post, there were lots of reasons I couldn’t sit down and do it. Here are my top three.

Television
I used to watch a lot more TV than I do now. One of the things that has helped me cut down on TV time is not having cable. I use several streaming services to watch current TV shows, which means I’m more intentional in my choices. I can’t channel surf, so gone are the days of flipping through stations with the remote, hoping to find something good, and then going through a second time in case I missed something. Still, between Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon, there’s a lot to draw my interest. TV needs to be something I reward myself with. After I finish writing a chapter, I can watch an episode of that show I’m crazy about. Otherwise, I’ll spend all day enjoying the creative efforts of others, rather than expressing my own.

Social Media
For me, this is a bigger time sucker than television. One of the reasons professional writers spend so much time on social media sites is because we’re told it’s good for marketing. It helps create a platform, expand our fan base, build name recognition and the like. However, if you’re not social, if all you do is plug your books, people quickly lose interest. It’s a fine line to walk. I’m a big Facebook user. The posts that get the most responses for me are the ones with pictures, usually of my dog or the amazing agave blooming in my front yard. It’s fun to interact with family and friends, and some readers, too. It’s also easy to go off on rabbit trails, looking at other posts, commenting on memes, taking quizzes to find out which cookie best describes my personality, and before I know it, an hour has gone by. That’s time I could have spent writing my novel.

My other social media addiction is Pinterest. I use the excuse that it gives me inspiration for future stories, and it does. One of my boards is named “Imagine” and the pictures there fuel my creativity. But I can literally spend hours on that site. I have so many recipes pinned now, I could prepare a year of meals. And I can never complete all the craft projects I’ve pinned. One day, I just might build that cinder block fire pit. First, though, I really need to write!

Reading
I know. We’re writers, and writers need to read! That’s totally true. Reading, especially things outside our genres, expands our minds, helps us think of things in different ways, and introduces us to new ways of saying something. But I can get lost in a good book. One chapter turns into two, hours pass, and I haven’t written anything. It’s another situation where I have to be intentional. I will read only so much. Or, I will write 1000 words on my own novel before I fire up the Kindle.

Here’s a Bonus Tip
Something I’ve discovered truly helps me get writing done is to make my work space portable. I have a laptop that I use most of the time. At this moment, I’m sitting in a recliner in the living room, typing away. I also have a desktop PC. In order to seamlessly go between the two, I use Dropbox. All my writing is saved in the Dropbox folder. When I save it on one computer, it updates the cloud folder, so the current version of my file is always available. And if I’m away from home and need to look at one of my documents, I can sign into Dropbox from any computer and access my files. It’s changed the way I work in a very positive way.

Bottom Line
Nobody really has enough time to do everything they want to do. But if you want to write, you’ll find ways to do it. Try this: Set a timer for 5 minutes. Write down everything you do in a day that’s negotiable. All the things you can put off for later, or spend less time doing. When that timer goes off, I’ll bet you’ll have a considerable list. Now you have a place to start. Go forward, and plan your attack.

Make time to write!

*  *  *

Jennifer AlLee was born in Hollywood, California, and grew up above a mortuary one block away from the famous intersection of Hollywood & Vine. Now she lives in the grace-filled city of Las Vegas, which just goes to prove she’s been blessed with a unique life. When she’s not busy spinning tales, she enjoys playing games with friends, attending live theater and movies, and singing at the top of her lungs to whatever happens to be playing on Pandora. Although she’s thrilled to be living out her lifelong dream of being a novelist, she considers raising her son to be her greatest creative accomplishment. You can visit her on Facebook, Pinterest, or her website.

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Ready for Fame ?~ Nava Atlas

Are You Ready for Fame? Classic Authors Dish about Being in the Public Eye

 

by Nava Atlas

We all know that writing, in its essence, isn’t about publishing. At the risk of stating the obvious, writing is a journey, one that, if you follow it with passion and heart, will take you where you need to go. But admit it. You’ve fantasized at least once about what it would be like to be a famous, bestselling author. I’ll admit that I’ve daydreamed about it at least once or twice—per day, that is.

What I learned from the authors I got to know while writing The Literary Ladies’ Guide to the Writing Life is that fame does have its pleasures and advantages, but it has its discontents as well. The twelve classic authors whose writing lives unfold in the book all craved recognition and its advantages—primarily the kind of independence that was hard-won to women of their times. None were “overnight successes,” though it may have appeared so to the world. Hard work, setbacks, and disappointments most often preceded their breakthroughs. The Literary Ladies ultimately reaped the rewards they richly deserved, to greater or lesser degrees. But they also found that fame meant having to deal with the ups and downs of becoming a public person, producing work in the glare of raised expectations, and having to deal with criticism.

One of those was Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose Uncle Tom’s Cabin was the first ever book of fiction that became an international bestseller. This modest woman (who gave birth to seven children and lost three along the way) was surprised when the book she’d yearned to write with the sole aim of creating social change also made her a global literary star. The book was as controversial as it was successful, so she was both celebrated and reviled at home and abroad.

A letter to her husband, written in 1856 while she was in England to promote her second novel, Dred, reveals how she learned to take the highs and lows of fame in stride: “One hundred thousand copies of Dred sold in four weeks! After that who cares what critics say? ... It is very bitterly attacked, both from a literary and a religious point of view ... but yet it goes everywhere, is read everywhere, and Mr. Low says that he puts the hundred and twenty-fifth thousand to press confidently ... Is not this blessed, my dear husband? Is it not worth all the suffering of writing it?”

Back in the day, authors quaked in anticipation of the opinions of print media critics, but now, we also need to fear reader-reviewers’ rants on online book sites. Once your words are out there, they’re fair game, and it’s hard not to let criticism hurt, no matter what its source. Madeleine L’Engle (best known for A Wrinkle in Time) hit the nail on the head when she explained why authors dwell on the one bad review among many: “I bleed from bad reviews, even though I have been very blessed in getting many more good reviews than bad reviews. But like every other writer I know, when you get ninety-nine good reviews and one bad review, what review stays in your mind? The bad one. And why? Because it awakens our own doubts.”

Most of us could do without public criticism, but becoming rich and famous within one’s lifetime is a “problem” most of us would be glad to grapple with. It does require an adjustment of one’s self-mage, however. Louisa May Alcott saw herself as a pen-wielding drudge, and once fame and fortune were assured with the publication of Little Women (a book she did just for the money, with low expectations), she wrote to her sister, “I can’t make the fortunate Miss A. [referring to herself] seem me, and only remember the weary years, the work, the waiting, and disappointment.”

But even as she reconciled herself to her new incarnation as a bestselling author, Alcott wasn’t content to rest on her laurels. She continued to write, though chronic illness made it increasingly difficult toward the end of her life (she died at age 55). Her success allowed her to provide for her mother and sisters, and letters to her publisher reveal gratitude and humble acknowledgment of the pleasures of fame and money.

Becoming famous within one’s lifetime can be a classic case of “be careful what you wish for.” Willa Cather had a fierce love/hate relationship with the press. Yet unlike most of the other Literary Ladies whose writing lives I learned about from their private letters and journals, Cather made it her business to be a public person, granting interviews and giving speeches galore. She behaved like a social networking maven within the milieu of her own times. Yet even as she did tons of outreach to bolster her reputation, she grew irritable with loss of privacy, complaining: “In this country a writer has to hide and lie and almost steal in order to get time to work — and peace of mind to work with.”

To gain recognition as a writer is a blessing. To become famous is a mixed blessing. Becoming a public person can be fun in small doses for those who can muster grace under pressure. Fifteen minutes —or a lifetime—of renown is something many writers would be willing to experience; but then it’s important to once again regain balance, and find a quiet oasis where work can flourish. Our literary role models learned to deal fairly well with fame and fortune, and if you and I should be so lucky, we’ll find a way to do so as well.

Nava Atlas is the author of The Literary Ladies’ Guide to the Writing Life. Visit the companion web site for more on classic authors and their wisdom for contemporary writers.

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